FT Racing

Well we had yet another mayhe, thick game of FT racing.

This time the rules:
Ships were SV design of 34 mass using the bridge and life support core
systems from humans. No mass needed for repair. Shields on cover 3 arcs
but massed and powered the same. Damage on wall impact was 10% velocity.
Range bands were 3". Engines are regular and not advanced.

As much as people were bitching that the SV would run away in a this
kind of game people discovered early on that too much thrust is as bad
as too little when you're not ready for it and the fragility of SV ships
means that any damage is bad damage.

Yet again Brian found a way not to hit anything and scream to the finish
way out in front. He found this easy by having the 2 other ships in the
race take bridge criticals within one turn travel distance of a wall. 

The course was a figure 8.

----------------
|	       |
|    /4\ /1\   |
|   5	s   2  |
|    \6/ \3/   |
|	       |
----------------

s = start


Going into the first turn everyone stay roughly together but while
rounding Corey hits the course wall and gives up.

Coming into the second wall I take the lead follow closely by Gerald
with Brian left a little farther behind because of a slow mark rounding.

Once past the second mark it was weapons free. This was very bad for me.
My ship only had a rear shield which was up but unfortunately it was my
front that faced Brian who had made a leap out to first. On 3 dice he
rolled 5,5,6 then 6, then 4. Which took me down to 5+ crits. Say goodbye
to 1/2s of my power, my bridge, my shield gen. Then into the wall the
next turn which took out another power gen and 4+ crits on the remaining
systems. Say goodbye to all my remaining systems. I was left with a
bridge (it was only off line for 1 turn thankfully) and 1 power gen.

Between turn 3 and 4 Gerald and Brian sniped at each other for little
damade except for a singe row on Gerald's ship.

By the time the other had made it to mark 4 I had some systems onling
and was moving, albiet very slowly with only 2 power gens and half an
engine.

Going around mark 4 brian guts Gerald's ship taking out his bridge and
slamming yet another poor ship into a wall.

This was game over for the rest of us. Brian was home free to finish the
course. I finally made it around and was on the 5-6 stretch with all my
systems back online and 2 hull to go (it took me forever to get anything
working. I rolled on 2 systems for 4 turns and managed to get life
support up and running 2 turns before I ran out of air).

Conclusions:
Well playing with SV based designs is a lot of fun. You can move at
incredable speeds and crash at them too. The short beam ranges made sure
there was no sniping but if you got really close (which is easy on a
small course where everyone has to go the same way) you can get your
clock cleaned.

Modifications to the rules:
Keeping:
* 3" range bands
* 10% damage on impact
* 3 arc shields
* Life support core system
* ship size 35 mass or less
* regular engine machanics
* no mass required for repair but must allocated energy equal to mass of
system to get a 4+ to repair

Changing:
* shields now mass minimum 2 (this is to balance only having 3 arcs)
* shields act as class 2 when undamaged
* dumping bridge core system. Instead each cortex node you have will
allow you to fire or control the ship. so with 2 cortex nodes you can
fire and thrust, with 3 you can fire, and fire, and thrust, or just keep
one as a backup. With just one cortex you can either fire for thrust.
* life support requires 3 energy to try and repair
* power generators are now treated like normal systems for criticals
* all systems take damage like main drive, halving their effectiveness.
(except power gens and cortex nodes which go offline if criticalled)

I think the system will still go through some evolution but it's a lot
of fun :)